Microsoft is offering about a quarter of its workforce money to walk away. The company has offered 60,000 of its roughly 223,000 workers a buyout or “voluntary exit offer” to step away from their jobs, according to Bloomberg. Those who choose to stick around could face layoffs later.
The offer, shared with Microsoft employees by Chief People Officer Amy Coleman, has been given to employees who are “level 70 and below,” which includes some employees with vice president titles and general managers, and applies to people in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom.
“This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Coleman wrote in the notice. Later in the letter, Coleman notes that employees who take the offer will be offered “financial support” and “career planning resources,” which seems like an acknowledgement that you’ll need to keep working, just not with Microsoft.
The company has been on something of a trend of layoffs lately, including offering a similar buyout to its retirement-age employees earlier this year. According to Bloomberg, about 30% of the 8,750 or so people who were extended that offer decided to take it and head into retirement early, cutting the company’s headcount by about 2,600. It followed that up with a straight layoff, axing about 4,800 people, including roughly 1,600 from its Xbox division, to reduce its total workforce by about 2%.
According to Coleman, the new buyout program “gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs,” which is great for the organizations and not exactly a concern of the people who will have to lose their jobs because of it.
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